It is often said that interactive artworks
blur the line between the artist and the audience. The audience becomes
creator in a medium invented by the artist. The artist enables the interactor
to express themselves creatively.

Myron Krueger has developed a complex set
of video-centered interactions which he calls Videoplace16.
The Videoplace installation is made up of a video camera, a video projector,
and a rack of specialized processors. The interactor's image, as seen by
the camera, is interpreted as a silhouette. This silhouette is analysed
in various ways and a response is generated and updated 30 times a second.
Writing of a subset of these interactions called Individual Medley he has
said:

Each is a restricted aesthetic
medium that can be composed through body movements. In fact, your body
becomes a means of creating art. The goal of these interactions is to communicate
the pleasure of aesthetic creation. Since these media are unfamiliar, dwelling
as they do on dynamic images controlled by movements of the viewers' bodies,
artists trained in traditional static media have no automatic advantage
in creating pleasing results.17

There is no question that people are given
a tangible and 'empowering' experience of creativity from an interaction
of this sort. This is precisely because the medium is 'restricted'. Presenting
a limited range of possibilities reduces the likelihood that the interactor
will run up against a creative block, and allows the medium to guide the
inexperienced hand of the interactor, reducing the fear of incompetence.
Such a creative experience is more powerful than traditional examples of
'guiding' media, such as paint by-numbers, because the interactor makes
decisions throughout the creative process. The interactor is therefore,
to some degree, genuinely reflected in the resulting creation.

In the hands of technologists, a medium
evolves towards apparent transparency (i.e. the development of a complete
range of pigments for oil paints, or the evolution from early low-resolution
black-and-white television to natural colour high-definition TV). The message
(as per McLuhan) that such a medium conveys may be powerful, but it is
generally unintentional. On the other hand, interactive artists intentionally
express themselves through the opacities and idiosyncrasies of the media
that they create. These media reflect, but also guide and transform the
gestures of the interactor.

The interactor becomes a creator. But,
as the conceivers of the media, interactive artists reserve a privileged
position for themselves. The product of the spectator's creative interaction
is often 'pleasing', but would rarely qualify as 'serious' art. To quote
Krueger: "It is the composition of the relationships between action and
response that is important. The beauty of the visual and aural response
is secondary."18

When the Apple Macintosh first came onto
the market, the MacPaint program, which simulates, to a degree, the visual
artist's basic tools, sent a shock-wave through the creative community.
For the first year, MacPaint-produced posters were everywhere, an apparent
explosion of the freedom of, and possibility for self-expression. But while
the MacPaint medium reflected the user's expressive gestures, it also refracted
them through its own idiosyncratic prism. After a while, the posters began
to blend together into an urban wallpaper of MacPaint textures and MacPaint
patterns. The similarities overpowered the differences. Since then, graphics
programs for computers have become much more transparent, but that initial
creative fervour that MacPaint ignited has abated. The restrictions that
made MacPaint easy to use were also the characteristics that ultimately
limited its usefulness as a medium for personal expression. One can look
at the distribution of a creative medium in the form of a software package
as a subtle form of broadcasting. (Next
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